


The Emperor's Clothes

by soteriophobe



Category: White Collar
Genre: Angst, F/M, Unrequited Love, Widowed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-19
Updated: 2012-06-19
Packaged: 2017-11-08 02:37:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/438218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soteriophobe/pseuds/soteriophobe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>What's so wrong with lies, anyhow? Nobody condemned them until they were told to.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Emperor's Clothes

Some days, it's as though she has Byron back.  Most days, that's what she allows herself to believe; even though it's a lie. Who cares that it's a lie?

It's a lie that she  _chooses_  to believe. A lie to keep her warm at night.

And what's so wrong with lies, anyhow? Nobody condemned them until they were told to. Once upon a time, they underpinned society - oral histories, folktales, faerie tales. They kept you safe, told you what to do, you lived or died on the strength of your belief in the lies they taught you.

In the folktales, the world was a magical place, where all living things were sentient and wise. Faerie tales told us that love was enough, that justice was always served; and swiftly. Cinderella got her prince - and birds pecked out the eyes of her abusers. Snow White was pulled from death's grip by nothing more than a kiss. 

All these beautiful lies that covered horrible truths - that the world was rarely fair, never just. That love was often  _not_  enough; that no amount of love could conquer death, however earnest. That trees and birds had no stories to tell, had nothing to say, had not a thought in their minds.

June preferred the lies - has always preferred the lies. It's what's attracted her to liars, her entire life.

Oh, the stories that Byron used to tell her, when they met! Jobs he'd pulled, people he'd met, his slippery escapes - her breath caught just hearing him speak. She hardly believed a word he said, was sure that every story was overblown and mostly false, but it never mattered to her. He could pull you in with his eyes, that man; there was just something about him that kept you mesmerized. He never had need to speak loudly, not once in his entire life - he could tell a story in a hushed whisper, and before he reached the end, he had the attention of an entire room of people.

He was magic. He  _was_  a lie. He was the kind of person who wasn't supposed to exist in this world, who seemed to have crossed over from some other plane. Too beautiful and fragile to be real, to be human. And she fell so in love with him, and he with her.

Looking back, she wonders if she fell for him so fast simply because she could not believe that someone like Byron could love someone like her.  _Her._ The little girl from Hell's Kitchen who grew up in a one-room apartment, reading faerie tales and dreaming of something better. That he considered her more precious than anything he'd stolen - any jewel or painting or bundle of cash - …well. To be considered so worthy is a seduction, itself.

More than that, though: Byron proved to her that magic  _did_ exist, that the stories weren't  _all_ lies. He showed her that sometimes you truly did meet a prince and live happily ever after.

That was before the police, of course - and the cancer. The police were nothing, but the cancer was a truth that neither of them could deny, and in the end all the lies in the world couldn't save him.

She nursed Byron through his last days. There was nothing magical about that.

But then, just as she was ready to say goodbye – to Byron, and everything he represented - Neal came along. A stranger in a thrift store; young, wild-eyed, with that same magnetism that Byron had when she met him. The moment he flipped on Byron's hat, she knew - the magic had come back into her life, some miracle had been passed down upon her. If Neal hadn't manipulated her into offering him her spare room, she would have offered it point-blank. She was in love with him before she even knew his name.

Her family, her friends, her staff, they told her she was crazy -  _What if he's dangerous, violent? What if some criminal he pissed off comes looking for him?_ But she didn't care. Chaos and danger and death were far preferable to the lifeless silence of a mansion once filled with laughter and love. If Neal proved to be her downfall, she welcomed the downfall. Far better to end with a bang than a whimper. Far better to take a bullet in the head than to go in the silent, pathetic way that Byron did.

She knows that Neal will never love her back. He sees her as a dear friend, a benefactor; a mother-figure, even. But he fills the deep chasm in her life that her husband left behind, and that's enough.

Love is love - why need it be reciprocal? And if Neal dresses in Byron's clothes, lives in his house, reenacts his behavior - who's to say that he isn't the same man? Who's going to tell her that she can't lie to herself, pretend that Byron never left? Why can't the magic of (and the love for) one remarkable man be transferred onto another?

Sometimes Neal will dance with her in her glittering parlor, Ella or Stevie or Billie drowning out the sound of their coordinated footwork. She rests her head against his shoulder and pretends - that the last ten years never happened, that the hand on the small of her back belongs to a man who loves her more than anything. That every story has a happy ending.

Lies, all of them - but beautiful lies. Lies that she is happy to believe, that she refuses to refute. The Emperor cannot be naked - she's given him new clothes. Anyone who cannot see them must be crazy, must be blind.   
  
That's the lie she tells herself. A lie to keep her warm at night. 

 

  



End file.
